Hellbent
by the-dandiest-of-lions
Summary: Sam and Dean investigate the murder of a psychiatrist who, while trying hypnotherapy on her new patient, suffered massive internal haemorrhages and broken bones. The patient turns out to be more than the standard possession or haunting. Largely OC centred, but we do see a lot of the boys. Oh, and because of reasons, there are undertones of Dean/Cas. Mine is an evil laugh.
1. Prologue

Dean Winchester whistled as he ducked under the yellow tape and took in the state of the room. Two squashy armchairs shredded and gutted. Fancy wallpaper torn, pieces littering the floor. Lightbulbs burst. Books were scattered everywhere on the floor, pages ripped out and spines bent. A breeze wafted through the smashed windows, ruffling the remnants of the curtains and the stray pages of various medical volumes.

"I guess this Molly Spencer chick didn't like her shrink."

"You could say that." Sam nudged the shredded Persian rug with his toe, revealing a Devil's Trap etched into the wooden floor. "Or you could say the shrink didn't like some of her patients."

"Yeah, looks like Doctor Bryce knew her shit." Dean stood by the late Doctor Bryce's desk, holding a thick, leather-bound book. "Look at this—_Demons of the Mind_, among others. And not metaphorical demons neither. So I guess the good doc was a hunter, then." He snapped it shut and slammed it back on the desk with an air of dismissal. "This looks like poltergeist mojo. Or a spirit."

"Molly Spencer is _alive_, Dean," Sam said distractedly as he brushed his fingers against the flayed wall. "Well, as far as we know."

"Oh, is she? Thanks for the revelation. All I'm saying is, something big went down. This chick is powerful. I mean, she screwed with all the wiring in this whole block! Wiped every computer within a kilometre radius."

"Dean. Perspective. She also fried her psychiatrist's brain. During their first session," Sam reminded Dean, crossing the room and leaning against the front of the desk to face his brother.

Dean chuckled. "Kinda ironic, that, ain't it?" He slid open a desk drawer and hefted out a thick folder. "Hey Sammy. Patient files." The folder hit the desk with a _thump._ "Maybe there's something from Molly's past shrinks in here. If the girl's fruitloop enough to go through six headshrinks, think they'd have made a few notes." He slid out _Spencer, Molly_'s file and opened it. Sam craned his neck to see the varied handwritten scrawls.

"Jesus, this girl was clocking a whole pharmacy of meds." Sam picked up the first sheet. "Anti-psychotics, sedatives, anti-depressants... And there's sleep therapy, routine exercise, whale sounds, you name it."

"The whole shebang."

"Wait, here's something—she was going to start hypnotherapy with Doctor Bryce."

"Hypnotherapy?" Dean asked, sounding as if that was the most ridiculous thing. "What, you mean the whole 'cluck like a chicken, quack like a duck' thing?"

"No, it's more like... it's more like solving a problem in the mind. Kind of talking your mind into doing something else. It helps with phobias or drug addiction."

Dean rolled his eyes. "You're such a nerd."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

"Don't let it go to your head, big guy. Hey—" there was the crunch of broken glass as Dean made his way around the desk, then, "—There're scorch marks here, on the floor." He crouched in front of the desk, between the two overstuffed armchairs, running his fingers over the symbols burnt into the wood. "Do you recognise these?"

"It's Enochian," a gravelly voice that was not Sam's replied, and Dean nearly head-butted Castiel when he straightened up, he had appeared so close.

"Cas." Dean stepped back a bit to preserve his sense of personal space. Someone had to. "How's it hanging? All up in the up zone?"

"I know you like to toy with me using your strange phrases, Dean," Castiel said, his eyes locked with Dean's and his head tilted as it so often was—Dean sometimes wondered if he even knew how to stand correctly in Jimmy's meatsuit: he perpetually looked crooked, always leaning to one side. It was endearing. "I _was_ well, before this happened." He waved his arm at the room in an almost grandiose gesture of acknowledgement.

"Before what happened?" Sam stood up straight, in hunter-mode. "Do you know what happened here, Cas?"

"Molly Spencer is a fallen angel," Cas said simply, moving tiger-smooth around the room, eyeing the scorch marks on the floor. "These marks are messages."

"Messages?" Dean frowned at the symbols. "In Angel lingo? Did this chick leave them here?"

"No," Cas said slowly, looking puzzled. "These make no sense. They're scrambled." He looked up at Dean. "She didn't leave them here. It appears to be a multitude of messengers attempting to warn us of her."

"Angel scared of angels," Sam said.

"So is it like Anna and Pamela, with the headcase seizure and the sudden revelation?" Dean raised an eyebrow as he cast a glance around the destroyed room again. "Because this looks a lot more explosive."

"I'm not sure what this is," Cas said, frowning.

"Dean, the hypnotherapy!" Sam's eyes widened, as they did with nerdy breakthroughs. "Bryce dug, and then Molly must have remembered what she was and fled!"

"What, so she goes under, kills her shrink after poltergeisting the room, grafittis the floor and leaves?" Dean snorted. "Fucking angels."

"When an angel falls, some power can remain residual through psychic connection. The therapist must have renegotiated its dormancy during hypnosis and triggered a volatile reaction. The messages may have not come from Molly herself, but from other angels using her as a kind of conduit." Cas looked from one Winchester to the other, unmoving, alien in his seriousness and determination. "There is a distinct possibility that Molly Spencer knows not what she has done or what she is. She fell and was reborn as a human."

"Same case as Anna," Sam pointed out.

"Except different," Cas said.

Dean suppressed the urge to roll his eyes and clapped his hands together in a gesture of finality and resolve—proactive and anticipating a good case. "Okay, kids, shall we go and find this crazy chick? Work out a thing to do?"

"We're not going to kill her," Sam said.

Cas looked from him to the markings burned into the floor, then up at Dean.


	2. Chapter One: Requiem

Natasha stepped out of the shower, almost slipping on the wet tiles. She wrapped a towel around herself and opened the door, steam curling from the bathroom into the rest of the tiny, single-bedded motel room. She dried herself and changed into jeans and a shirt, mussing her newly-shortened, freshly dyed hair with the towel. Her bare arms felt naked without the constant tickle of her once-waist-length blonde hair. Now it was boyishly short and brown. She couldn't get used to it; every time she looked in the mirror she'd wonder who she was looking at for a split-second. Which was kind of the point, she had to admit.

And, all things considered, she wasn't sure about who she was right now anyway. She wasn't Molly anymore, and that was a simplicity which scared her a little. She hadn't meant to kill Doctor Bryce, but it was all too overwhelming, coming out of the trance and finding the room blown apart and the doctor staring at her, terrified, as she held a gun to her head, demanding to know what she was and where she was from. Molly's father was slamming into the door, yelling her old name and then Molly had panicked and screamed, and then the doctor was shaking and Molly could hear her bones cracking and breaking and then she crumpled like a rag doll onto the floor, blood leaking from her ears and her nose and her mouth.

Molly had climbed out the window, stolen her dad's credit card and become Natasha by the time her dad finally kicked down the door. She'd caught a bus halfway across the state, cash in her pocket and her dad's card strapped to her phone and left at the bus stop where he'd find it. Under the name Natasha Tilley, she'd rented this crap room for a week. She thought she'd run far enough for now. New hair, new name. She was living on take-away and coffee.

Two days ago she'd gone to a payphone outside the motel and _almost_ called home. She'd walked back to her room after two minutes of standing and dithering, twisting her fingers together.

Presently she made herself a cup of coffee and was carrying it across the room when she heard someone knock on the door and a man call, "Hello? Natasha Tilley?"

She froze, still holding her coffee, unsure of what to do, then called back, "I've paid my rent, and I'd like to be left alone, please." She waited through the pause.

"We're FBI."

"What?" she squeaked, then flinched as the person outside rattled the doorknob.

"Come on, we just want to talk to you!" A different voice this time. So there were at least two.

She shoved the coffee onto the bedside table, slopping it everywhere, and wrenched the lamp out of the socket, ready to use it as a weapon. She opened the door a crack, the security chain still in place, and looked at the two suits standing on her doorstep. "Let me see your badges. What do you want from me?"

One of them, the size of a freaking _tree_ with a ridiculous mop of brown hair, showed her his badge as reassurance and said, "Darcy Lewis. This here is—"

"Peter Thorburne," the shorter one said, flashing Natasha a gorgeous smile and his badge.

"What do you want from me?" Natasha shifted on her feet, hoping they couldn't see the lamp she was holding like some ridiculous sword. "Am I in trouble?"

"You tell us," the shorter one—Peter—said. "May we come in?"

"Um..." Natasha turned back, looking into the room. "I'll be a minute." And she shut the door.

She moved quickly, quietly, taking her hairbrush from the bathroom and shoving her dirty clothes and what was left of the takeaway Chinese into her bag. She went back into the bathroom, locked the door and put the toilet seat down. The clouded window above the toilet was big enough for her to climb through. She shoved at it, grunting, and it opened outwards on a hinge.

She could hear the two guys banging on the door and yelling her name. As she pushed her bag through the open window where it fell to the ground two metres below, she heard a crash as the door was kicked down. She shoved at the window again, panicking, and it flew off the hinge and smashed on the concrete of the carpark. She stuck a leg through and started to wriggle through the hole, when there was a strange sound, like a cloth falling to the floor and a gravelly voice said, "You shouldn't have done that."

She slipped and fell, cutting her leg on the jagged glass and hitting her back on the toilet as she crash to the floor. A man was standing over her, dressed in a tattered trenchcoat and suit. He reached down and pulled her to her feet, a hand gripping her arm tight. The two agents kicked the door down and the shorter one said, "Cas?"

"Meet me in your hotel room," growled the man holding Natasha, and she heard someone say, "Fucking angels," and then everything blurred and compressed and suddenly they were standing in a completely different room and breathing different air. She swayed and the man holding her redoubled his grip, then gently sat her down on one of the two Queen beds, his hand still on her arm. "I apologise, for I don't have the strength to heal you. I recently took a rather tiring vacation. Please remain seated while I patch you up. Then we talk."

She tore out of his grip, ignoring the throbbing in her head and the pain in her cut leg. "Who the _hell_ are you?"

He stood over her, his gaze matching hers, unwavering. "I am Castiel. Stay still. Do you want some water?"

"No." She stared up at him mutinously, and he just stayed, looking back at her. Something about him calmed her, an innate sense of familiarity. "I want to know what's happening to me."

"You were close to remembering who you are—"

"Bullshit. I know who I am." The words came quickly, and she stiffened at how false they felt; how stale. She'd sensed _something_ before she blacked out at Doctor Bryce's, and her stomach clenched as Castiel sat on the bed across from her, his elbows on his knees, looking at her intently, challenging her.

"You know there's something different, Molly."

"My name is Natasha." She wanted to cry.

"I'm sorry," he said softly and then he leaned forward and touched two fingers to her forehead.


	3. Chapter Two: Angel Blades

**Hi, people. I just want to say thanks for the faves and stuff. I shall try to update more, I've just been working on school stuff and music and all sorts of life things. So, yeah, thanks for reading.**

* * *

Dean kicked down the door. "Cas." He ran to the angel, who lay like crumpled paper on the floor, blood dripping from his nose.

"What happened?"

"She escaped," Cas growled, leaning on Dean, who stumbled slightly. Sam went and supported Castiel's other side.

"Geez, Purgatory really took it outta you, Cas," Sam observed, glancing at Dean.

"Occasionally I do feel faint. Like Leviathan are still crawling under my skin," Cas said darkly, and then he coughed blood onto his chin and shirt. "She's strong," he croaked. "She ripped the bathroom window from the wall back at her hotel. That means—" He coughed again, a wretched sound. "That means her Grace, wherever it is, is volatile. It's reaching out to her. Heaven tried to warn us." He slipped down, and Dean redoubled his grip on the angel's arm when suddenly he collided with Sam, hands grabbing at thin air.

"_Again? Really?_" Dean spat, straightening up. "What the _fuck,_ Cas?"

No reply. Sam clapped him on the shoulder. "Come on."

* * *

Jill was crying again, rocking back and forth, screaming words which made no sense to Thomas. They might be gibberish, they might be another language. She did that sometimes; babbled and screamed in German and Indian and Italian and thousands of other tongues even though her only language was English. And sometimes she whispered words of no language on Earth that sent shivers crawling up Thomas' spine.

"Jill? Jilly? Calm down, they're gone. Jill? Come on, please." He crouched beside her, rubbing her back.

Her hands made fists in her dirty blonde hair and she curled into herself, her screams dying down into sobs and finally whimpers. "They don't stop," she whispered, shaking and leaning into her brother.

He stroked her hair. "It's okay now, Jilly, it's okay." Meaningless words. It wasn't okay.

"They don't stop screaming. They're in my head. _They're still here. _I can see their faces, they're always _looking at me._"

He held her as she shuddered and blood pooled from the body on the grungy floor in front of them. "Come on, Jilly. We gotta go."

Eventually they stood and made their way out into the night-cloaked streets.

* * *

Cas didn't return for three days. During that time Sam and Dean were traversing the roads, chasing up dead demons whose vessels were left bled out from a stab wound, sometimes within a hastily painted Devil's Trap.

"So someone's got a hold of a demon-killing knife." Sam slapped the newspaper onto the table and sat forward, looking at his brother. "It could be Molly Spencer."

"Looks like," Dean mumbled through a mouthful of breakfast. He swallowed. "But that means one of two things: more angels or more demons."

"So you think someone down there knows how Ruby made the knife and came up to share the knowledge? That makes no sense, Dean."

"Well, I guess I just don't like the idea of more angels coming in to fuck with us, whether they're teenage girls or not," Dean stabbed another bit of sausage with his fork, annoyed. "But it's more likely."

"So... angel blade?"

"Angel blade."

The next day they'd put on their Fed suits and were at yet another scene, trying to find some sign, some consistency they could follow to another location. Dean had tried praying to Cas to get him to come back and help,_ goddammit_, but to little avail. Sam reluctantly called Garth, who didn't know anything about no hunter nor angel who had the blade.

"If he's killing demons, he's a good guy," Garth insisted. "He's one of us, bro. But we gotta find him. He's got his own agenda, and that could lead to demolition. He's a bit..."

"Indiscreet?"

"Hell yeah."

"He's obviously being tailed by those sons of bitches."

Sam searched various surveillance sources, but Little Miss Angel had disappeared. Dean maintained the possibility that she'd somehow gone back to "land of the junkless". Sam wondered if Crowley had gotten a hold of her, and both of them were sick to death of angels wiggling their fingers in Earth's pie.

The third morning of a fruitless attempt at a search, Dean awoke to find Sam gone on his breakfast run and Cas standing over him, eyeing him with that almost speculative look.

"Fucking hell, dude," he spluttered, scrambling to a sitting position on the cheap and nasty hotel bed, "you need to stop _doing _that!"

"Dean, we need to go." Cas was looking worse for wear; hair sticking up all over the place, trenchcoat creased and tie even more askew than normal.

"What? Why? What?" Dean rubbed his eyes, sleep still clinging to him like a parasite.

"I have found Molly. She's in Ohio."

"So she's still Earth bound, then?" Dean asked, pulling a boot on. He'd slept in his clothes, Cas noticed, and looked exhausted. "What about her angel juice? Her Grace?"

"I am unable to sense it completely. There's some kind of block, but occasionally it shifts and I am able to get flashes. It's strange, like it's not secure in its vessel."

"And that's bad?"

"Molly is unconsciously reaching out to it. Volatile angelic power can have disastrous consequences."

"Yeah, yeah, chained to a comet, wave of celestial intent, the size of a Chrysler building, I know. Keep on pruning your peacock feathers, Cas."

Cas frowned in annoyance and watched Dean finish lacing his boots.

"Can't you just zap away and get her?" Dean stood and ran a hand through his hair, stifling a yawn.

"I don't really want to confront her that way. We need to talk to her about what she is and what she has done."

* * *

Molly had never been religious. Now she didn't know what she was. She lay in bed, whispering to herself. "Angel of the Lord. Angel of the Lord. Angel of Heaven. Angel of the Lord..."

She remembered the pain of falling, the bolt of agony as she tore the starlight of her Grace out, leaving her body dark and heavy and _human._ She remembered growing up with her parents, horses, dogs and cats. They'd always been animal people.

She didn't know _why_ she'd fallen. Heaven was a memory, Earth was a tangibility. But the reason, the reason for the pain and the delicious heaviness of being human, the reason was nothing. Silence answered her as she asked herself. Silence answered her as she asked her Father.

So she rolled over onto her side, fitting the blanket snugly around herself, and slept.


End file.
